Maver Match This Qualifier, Larford Lakes, Saturday 3rd May 2014

I spent Friday fishing the match lake at Larford with Andy Kinder, a coaching session, I had heard good feedback from others who have had coaching sessions with him, so I took the opportunity to see what I could do to improve.  As I suspected, it's mainly down to feeding, which must be the the single most important aspect of match fishing, so hopefully some new ideas to try out in the forthcoming matches.  A great days fishing, mostly F1's, smallest fish over 1lb, biggest probably 4 1/2lb, with a few carp in amongst them, biggest 10lb, I will certainly go back and fish some matches on that lake, I just wish we had some F1 venues in Somerset.

Todays match was a total sellout, with match lake, specimen lake and arena lake all pegged.  Arena was going to be the unknown quantity, as it hasn't be fished much since the lakes at Larford were 'flooded' and at levels 6' or more above normal.  After yesterdays session, I quite fancied a bash at the F1's and carp of match lake, so of course, out comes peg 50 on the chalet bank of speci lake.  I could tell by the look on the locals faces, that my drawbag inability had followed me to the midlands and they did conform my fears that this was a draw that wasn't even in with a slim chance of qualifying.

Plenty of time to tackle up so I set up a method, a straight lead, a pellet waggler and a pole rig to fish meat short, this was by general consensus of the locals, the way to fish this peg.

To cut a long boring 5 hours short, I had one missed bite on the pellet waggler, nothing on the bomb or pole and 3 bites on the method, a 12ber and a 6lber landed, one nearer 20lb shed the hook - it came in like a small fish, so I was shocked to see a huge common, I estimate at 20lb surface, before it rolled and dived, shedding the hook as it did.

The guy to my right blanked, there were plenty of others along our bank who struggled, so it was a pretty miserable day, an easy way to kiss goodbye to the £50 entry and £20 pools.

James Wilson won fron peg 24 on Arena with 205lb, well done to him, I didn't get any other results, I guess they'll be on the MMT website before too long.